I PossibleInstability, am starting a club where fellow Atheists can meet each other and talk. I have met few Atheists and I would like to meet some more.
Well, I used to be a strong Christian. Church every Sunday, I think this is why I always want to debate religion because I basically know both sides. Well anyways...
One day I just came to a realization that there is a lot of evidence against religion. AG was another thing that contributed to my conversion. I use to debate as a Christian but I's always get out-witted. Then I did a lot of research... A lot. I concluded that supposed morals in the Bible were not morals I wanted. I also found a lot of contradictions in the bible. This made me realize that the bible was written by man.
In conclusion, there is just a ton of evidence supporting evolution.
Oh and don't think it's easy being an atheist, especially in Tennessee. I still haven't came out yet, for fear of being bullied or hassled. I've only told like 4 people so far. I'm still pondering of how I will tell my parents. :P
...No... That subject is highly debatable. Some people will believe differently than others. I still think it was a ****-move to not make the Bible literal. (That is if it was the word of God, which I doubt.)
It is the word of God, but not the words said by God. I hope you get what that says. The authors who wrote down the word are divinely inspired, but as human they are not perfect and hence make mistakes. I do not think it is right to blame the imperfections of the Bible on God but rather the humans themselves.
And so the flame war continues.
I hope you are not referring to Flippin and I as we are having a nice discussion.
Perhaps we should start with the question of what were the deciding factors for you that made you come to the conclusion there was no god?
*sadly leaves thread* as I am a Christian But... if anyone wants some nice discussion (aka Flipin) I shall gladly come back
No, the debate, not flame war, continues. Those are two completely different things. Plus, stop posting pointless stuff like that. How about you actually contribute to the thread.
I think I had a rather unique view of religion growing up. My mom was Catholic, my grandfather converted to Judaism for a time, my dad while born catholic eventually ended up I think Buddhist then later took a more agnostic stance. I also spent time learning and participating in a variety of other religions. As a matter of fact my time learning about the Wiccan religion played a role in my choice of online names (Mage).
I was told all the time how the Bible was a good moral guide. But the parts that were suppose to be real and the parts that were suppose to be interpreted were never made clear. I would see people clearly use there religion as a mask for there own bigotry, then be regarded as good Christians for it. I began to notice similarities between people who had been brainwashed in cults and the way many Christians spoke. This put a bad taste in my mouth and the bigotry became my own, and I began to hate the religion. But yet I still held on to the 'moral' parts I grew up with learning.
Now I didn't take the Bible or any religious text for that matter literally. Rather I figured each religion had there own piece of the truth in them. I couldn't tell you how long I spent trying to piece it all together, trying to figure out which part of what religion made sense and which didn't. Every time I came across a new religion the puzzle seemed to make less and less sense. At this point I would say I was agnostic.
I began to read the Bible more in depth and seeing how much had to be put aside to get to the moral parts was amazing to me. I began to wonder how this became a moral guide to begin with, with so mcuh cruelty in it even from the "all loving" God. I would have ended up an atheist sooner with this line of reasoning but I was misinformed of what an atheist really was, and believed it to be just as single minded to absolutely say there wasn't a god as it was to say there was a god.
My major turning point was with one of the last conversations I had with my dad before he died. My dad was talking about what he personally believed and asked me if I thought there was a god. I had pretty much stopped talking about what I believed and didn't believe at this point and was taken back a bit by the question. I sat there thinking about it for a minute and said "I don't know".
I guess because it was one of the last conversations I had with him before he passed away it stuck in my mind, but I began to do research on the internet and really challenge what I believed against hard facts. I learned that what I thought an atheist was, was not correct. As I learned more about Christianity from a factual basis I began to stop hating the religion. I watched the debates between atheists and Christians on Youtube, much of it seem to mirror the questions I had been asking myself. I learned it was okay to say "I don't know". As a put each thing I believed against reality and it got shot down I eventually ended up coming to the conclusion I was an atheist.
One last thing, this forum is the first place I have come out and stated I was an atheist in a public way. So I know how you feel Flippin. I have only told a couple people in my family and my girlfriend. I'm not going to tell my grandmother though. I think she would just feel hurt by it. If I lived with her and she was forcing me to go to church every Sunday it might be a different story. So I just don't see any reason to do that to her.
